


If You're Worried That You're Insane, You're Probably Not

by sharkcar



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Anthropology, Bad Pick-Up Lines, Camp Followers, Clone Sex, Clone Wars, Clone humor, Drinking to Cope, Drugs, Foster families, Gender Relations, Having Faith, Having no game, Honor, Insanity, Invented Rituals of Competition, Jokes, Judgment, Loss, Loss of Virginity, Mandalore, Mando'a, Matriarchal society, Military, Military Uniforms, Order 66, Prostitution, Relationship(s), Sexism, Sexual Slavery, Slavery, Stereotypes, Twi'leks, War, Women In Power, pharmaceuticals, warriors - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-10
Updated: 2016-08-10
Packaged: 2018-08-07 23:03:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7733233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sharkcar/pseuds/sharkcar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Commander Wolffe of Plo Koon's 104th Battalion is the first to admit that he and his brothers have problems relating to women. With his cynical humor, he recounts the clones common experiences, such as their lack of self-confidence, the night life on Coruscant, the prevalence of drugs, their limited opportunities, serving with the celibate Jedi, and their interactions with the various professional girls in their social circle. Against the background of his leave time spent on Coruscant during the war, Wolffe tells the stories of his two most important female relationships, with his friend Ahsoka, who was like a sister, and C.C., a Twi'lek pro who seems to just like having him around.</p><p>My second attempt to develop an actual characterization for Wolffe, this one in relation to the females in his life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If You're Worried That You're Insane, You're Probably Not

**Author's Note:**

> Some dialogue from Star Wars: The Clone Wars episode "To Catch a Jedi" by Charles Murray

If you would have asked me, I’d have told you, I was pretty shy around women. We all started out like that even though we liked them. Only a few of us were gay. I’m not really sure what caused that difference to this day. We were all supposed to be genetically identical. But mutations did occur. Circumstances in incubation could be different. Whatever it was didn’t matter to us. We clones didn’t find each other attractive at all, so in terms of romance, on Kamino we were all in the same situation. I envied those guys sometimes, though, since they had an easier time talking to potential partners. Talking to other guys was easy. Most of our lives, we had never seen women. Then when we left Kamino, it seemed like women were everywhere. It could be really distracting, we were confused about how to treat them. We certainly didn't understand them. Nobody had ever given us any guidance. At least we couldn't reproduce, we could have gotten into so much trouble. Almost all the ladies we worked with were Jedi. No personal relationships possible there. We could treat them the same as we treated the male generals and commanders, so we did. It was different in a social setting. The army tried to forbid us, fraternizing with civilians was technically illegal for us. But you can’t really rob people of their basic impulses.  
  
I don’t think many of us ever became really good with the ladies. You had to have confidence for that. Clones were in general pretty self-deprecating. We had a low opinion of ourselves and it showed. I mean, most other people treated us pretty bad, why shouldn’t we? We expected to be rejected and we usually were. We were all insanely brave, we could run into a hail of blaster fire no problem. But set most of us in a room with a girl and we’d have our backs to the wall. We’d say the stupidest things when we were nervous, too. Most of us had no game. We knew it. We teased each other about it.  
  
Our generals were no help. They cared about us and looked after us, but having celibate monks give you advice on dating was ridiculous. Only General Skywalker’s men ever seemed to get a clue. They had his example to follow. That handsome bastard was smooth. His C.O., Rex, wasn’t afraid of girls. I didn’t ever see him take one home himself, but he was a pretty private brother. Whatever he was doing, he kept to himself. But he’d play wing man for his guys. He never helped me out, he said that was because he didn’t want to get someone in trouble. His guys were under his command, so he knew they wouldn’t be punished severely for it. He knew damned well that my superior, General Plo Koon, permitted us to fraternize. I think he really just didn’t want to help anyone but 501st guys. Their legion was pretty close knit and competitive. Some commanders, like Cody of General Kenobi’s 212th, could be pretty harsh about fraternizing. Cody and his guys didn’t go without sex. But they confined themselves to the pros. It kept things from getting complicated, he said.  
  
To most of us, the professional girls were all that was available. We didn’t have to be seductive with them. We weren’t judged for saying stupid things. We just got what we wanted and the girls got paid. The Tchun-Tchin was a strip club and brothel where most of us went now and again. It wasn’t anything special. Prices weren’t terrible and you didn’t have to haggle. You paid on the way out, just like at a restaurant or bar. Neither we nor the girls really considered each other as people or interacted much. The girls were all slaves of the Hutt clan that ran the club. They weren’t allowed to talk to us. We couldn’t think of anything to say to them. So the transactions were pretty mechanical.  
  
The other pros worked at 79’s, the clone bar on Coruscant, which was a more nuanced situation. The girls were independent. You would negotiate for what you wanted and you would agree on the deal. We all knew them and actually interacted with them socially too. Like work colleagues of a sort. Each girl was famous among us. We all had stories about experiences with them. They knew every secret we had. These ladies had a lot of power in our society because we all wanted to be on good terms with them.  
  
Among these girls, C.C. was queen. She was utterly unapologetic about being a whore. Back on Ryloth, she had been a slave and she said that both required the same work, but at least a whore had a choice about who to be with.  
  
She nicknamed herself ‘Central Command’ since, like the headquarters, ‘half the army had been in there’. She wasn’t wrong about that. She had done most of the brothers I knew. The ones she hadn’t still wanted to. She wasn’t a bit intimidated by us. She knew how unsure we were of ourselves and she gave us attention. If anyone got rough with her, she knew all she had to do was whimper and an entire squad of brothers would rush to her rescue.  
  
Even the Jedi respected her, after a fashion. Once a few of them started visiting us at 79’s, she would walk right up and talk to them. General Kenobi was polite with her and called her, “My dear.” She propositioned General Skywalker, he said he was sure he couldn’t handle her. Master Plo offered to purchase her services for me. She just laughed and told him to keep his money. She kissed me then dragged me in the back. I felt like everyone was jealous of me then.  
  
That was the closest I’ve ever felt to being in love.  
  
\--  
  
My first time with a girl was at the Tchun-Tchin, really early in the war. It was an establishment that featured Twi’leks. This was the first time most of us had ever seen either a Twi’lek or a naked girl. We kind of associated the two things after that. A lot of people do, since so many Twi’leks were enslaved and made into sex workers. For Twi’lek women in general, I know, that stereotype plagues them. I understood. We clones had to deal with a lot of negative stereotypes about us, too.  
  
So me and my batch mates went to the Tchun-Tchin after seeing it advertised on a coaster from 79’s. We came in and the protocol droid gave us each a small datapad and took us each to a different room. We would punch in what we wanted from the menu on the datapad and the girl obliged. Then we left. That was it. Don’t get me wrong, it felt good. Once I had tried it, I knew I wanted to do it again. But it wasn’t exactly the best thing I’d ever had from an excitement standpoint. I had expected more. Like the rush of adrenaline that you got from a fight, or from winning at a competition, or from risking your life. From that perspective, the experience was kind of numb.  
  
When we got back to 79’s, I talked to a drug dealer when I went up to get my drink. He was offering a few things. We went to the bathroom and I bought a few lines of some amphetamine. It made me feel invincible. It was a lot cheaper than the girl had been. It lasted longer, too.  
  
\--  
  
When 79’s opened, C.C. was one of the first girls to start coming in. She just walked in with these high boots and this little outfit. She had a little cap on, like a lot of Twi’lek girls wear over their lekku. Her tattoos were cool. She smoked death sticks openly in the bar. She wore bright red lipstick. She would walk up to us and ask us in that sexy accent of hers, “Would any of you gentlemen like to spend some time with me.” Most of us would. She was the most exciting thing I'd ever seen.  
  
She mostly used the bathroom stalls. We’d clear out when she was in there, mostly to let the brother she was with have some privacy. It wasn’t the most comfortable situation, but it worked. She had a flat, so you could ask her to go back there, but it cost a lot. If you purchased her services, you could expect the time to be a lot of fun, I’d always heard. She was relaxed and spontaneous. She could almost convince a guy that she enjoyed it. But she always made sure she got the money.  
  
\--  
  
The first time I ever worked up the courage to get with her was after the Abregado Disaster. My entire outfit, the 104th, had been aboard the Triumphant when the cruiser and two others were destroyed by an ion cannon attack by the Separatists ship The Malevolence. I was pretty high naturally from just having survived it.  
  
I had some leave time while they assembled a new 104th for me on Kamino. It was the end of the night at 79’s, my only surviving men, my batch mates Boost and Sinker, were having a competition to see who could take the most slaps to their clasped hands. I was sitting at the table with two other commanders, my brothers Cody and Bly. We were getting pretty drunk. Bly was starting to tell us about some of his escapades with the husband of a representative in the Galactic Senate. We were trying to guess the planet she represented, while Bly laughed and rated the attractiveness of each of the species we mentioned. We eventually guessed it, it was Scipio. He found Muuns weirdly attractive, he said.  
  
C.C. came over to our table for like the fifth time that night, which she did as she circulated. She would talk to us between tricks. But she never stopped watching the room for business. She said she was like the hostess of the party. Whenever I was in 79’s, I had always bought her a drink or two in exchange for a story. I would record her on my player pod as she recounted funny stuff or things she’d heard guys say, or she’d tell a joke. She was unbelievably talented as a performer. I gave her a headphone from my pod a few times and asked her if she knew the Twi’lek song I was listening to. She sang it. It sounded great. She was so much fun to watch.  
  
“So gentlemen, I’m doing last call. If nobody wants anything, I’ll go home. What about you, Cody? You want to walk me home?”  
  
She didn’t intimidate him, but he politely refused with a simple “No, thank you.” He was really serious about rules of conduct back then. He didn’t even do pros that early in the war.  
  
“I can walk you if you want.” I offered. The Malevolence had been destroyed, it had been on the holo-net news. We were heroes. I was feeling pretty invincible.  
  
“Alright, let’s go, cutey,” she patted my shoulder.  
  
I waved at my batch mates as I left. They looked appreciatively at C.C. as she walked out.  
  
I was wearing my cloth uniform still. I wore it sometimes. Some guys wore armor all the time. Armor was a pretty protective shell. But the night was cold, so I shivered a bit. C.C. had a coat made out of some kind of fake fur. It looked natty as hell, but she wore it like it was made of snow fox. She smoked a death stick.  
  
“So the fee for using my place is two thousand. That is a flat rate. Non-negotiable. Anything else you want to do costs the same as it would at the bar. No weird stuff, though, I’m tired,” she said to me suddenly.  
  
“Ummm, okay.” Like I said, I was really bad at talking to women. I hadn't been alone with one in a while.  
  
I had a bonus I’d gotten from the Grand Army after Abregado. I wondered what it would feel like to do something special for a change. “I always wanted to try spice. Do you have any?”  
  
She laughed so hard. She had plenty, she dealt it. I paid for a large dose and we smoked it before we went to bed. We were both feeling pretty good. The experience was so relaxed that we were able to feel confident. It went on for hours. Even she seemed to really enjoy it. At least, she could perform like she did. She smiled a lot. That made me smile. She was so much fun to watch. I left her my whole bonus on the dresser when I left in the morning before she was awake. It was the most fun I’d ever had.  
  
\--  
  
The next time I saw her was about a month later. I brought some of my new 104th shinies into 79’s. “Wolffe! You beautiful bastard! How are you?” She came over and kissed my cheek.  
  
I introduced her to them, “Guys, I want you to meet a person who is practically a Grand Army institution,” I put my arm around her. She smiled up at me, “This is C.C.” All of my guys applauded. They had heard of her.  
  
“Hello, shinies! I am looking forward to meeting all of you and introducing you to some of my friends,” she indicated some other girls who had walked over. Most of the pros at 79’s were Twi’lek or human. I think there was an Ithorian girl who worked there for a while, but she didn’t get much interest for whatever reason and moved on to another bar.  
  
I was really busy that night, since practically all my guys were at the bar, I had a lot of people I had to talk to and get to know. C.C. had the same duty. I did have a hit of spice when I went to use the restroom and she was just going in with a guy. He smoked it with us. I told C.C. to get me some more for my leave time and she told me to come home with her that night. “Uh, okay. I’ll see you for last call.” I was surprised. I was going home with her. She was basically giving me an appointment rather than make me compete with my brothers. I felt pretty important. Still, I didn’t have a bonus that time. I was worried I didn’t have enough so I asked Cody for a loan. He wouldn’t do it. He said I was an idiot. Girls could be bought for cheaper. I was an idiot. But I was desperate not to lose face in front of my guys. I raised General Plo on the com. He came to 79’s himself to give me the money. He said he didn’t even want it paid back. I was really touched by the gesture. He always had my back, that guy, like some kind of older brother.  
  
I took the money with me when I left with C.C. We had already silently acknowledged that we were going to do the same as last time. So there was nothing to be done on the walk home but talk. She joked with me. I was in armor, so I wasn’t cold. I was still kind of tense, I shivered a little. We were both drunk and stumbling. I don’t know what made me do it, but I stopped at one point and when she turned I murmured in a low voice, “Come here.”  
  
She stepped over, smiling with her red lips. I bent my head and kissed her, touching the back of her neck gently. She wrapped her arms around me and kissed back. She backed away and, still smiling, took my hand. “Come on.” We walked to her place like that, hand in hand. It was so late at night that no one was on the street to be scandalized or to call the police. We smoked death sticks on her stoop before we went up. She put her head on my shoulder.  
  
“This armor is really uncomfortable,” she squirmed to adjust her position.  
  
“I know. It’s heavy, too,” I chuckled.  
  
“I know, I’ve removed enough of it.”  
  
“C.C., thanks for inviting me. I’m really looking forward to tonight. But I don’t know if I’ll be able to do it again next time. I don’t actually have a lot of money. You’re better off if you keep the night free for some guy who can pay.” Man, I said stupid things. No game at all. I thought I was just being honest.  
  
She smiled, but weakly. “Alright. I won’t invite you anymore.”  
  
This time, it wasn’t as good as the first. We came out of the bedroom after we were done and smoked another dose of spice and fell asleep on the couch. When I got up to go, she told me to just pay her for the spice and the flat rate. I could have her for free. I told her I could pay her. She said not to worry, since she thought the quality of the drug this time was low and she wanted to assure customer satisfaction. She sounded sarcastic. I was a little insulted, I was just trying to make sure she hadn’t lost business by giving me her time. I was trying to help her. I left her exactly the amount she had asked for. I took the rest and gave it back to Master Plo. He took me to watch pod races and gamble. We had a lot of fun. Won a bunch of credits.  
  
\--  
  
Then we went off to Khorm. I lost an eye on Khorm. Was subjected to Force torture by Asajj Ventress, the famous Separatist assassin. It was the most frightening thing I’ve ever experienced. I admit, I have not been fully right in the head since. The whole thing made me a little cracked, unpredictable. Drugs kept me more even, so I did more. They gave me a prescription for painkillers and a leave to Coruscant to heal from the surgery to attach my prosthetic eye. I came out of that hospital looking positively frightening. Huge scar, blank white robotic eye that moved around all the time in a somewhat jerky fashion. It was funny to use as a form of intimidation. My men were totally in fear of me. I looked like I might come unhinged at any moment. So of course, I played it up.  
  
I was sure the ladies would find me less desirable than ever. Before, I could barely get women to talk to me, never mind get a date or something. My batch mates, who I outranked, did way better than I did with girls. It was embarrassing. I hung out with Rex when I got a chance. We set our guys loose but we both slept alone at the base. He didn’t give any thought to women, he obeyed the rules out of choice, whereas I had just given up. Sinker had threatened to circulate a coined term ‘lone wolf’ which would be used to call guys who were always striking out with the girls.  
  
Now I had this crazy appearance. My men started calling me, “Old One Eye,” which was essentially calling me a dick. Ha. Ha. Oh, bravo, bastards! What sophisticated comic craft! Idiots.  
  
Anyway, I left the hospital at Central Command and went to my quarters to get dressed. I wanted to go out, I was on leave alone. Boost and Sinker were put in temporary charge of the 104th. I had a week off. I had the cloth uniform. I had a huge bonus for my battle scar and a pocket full of pills. I was ready to show some girl the time of her life. There was just one problem. I looked like a cyborg monster.  
  
I knew nobody was going to want to be seen with a thing like me. Girls who went out with clones risked being ostracized by their communities. Sometimes they would be arrested with us. It was humiliating for them. It could also be dangerous. Not all people just called us names. Sometimes they attacked us as well. If a girl wanted to risk all that, she would have her pick of us. Why would she ever want me? I gave up before I even got to the door to my quarters.  
  
I went to 79’s, not because I really wanted to see C.C. I didn’t even think she would want me the way I was. I pictured her refusing my money in disgust. I also remembered how mad she’d seemed at me. Still, there just weren’t that many bars to go to. I figured that if I saw her, I would buy her a drink at most. I didn’t feel like I had a right to ask for anything more after what I’d told her last time. I just wanted her to know that I cared about her more as a friend than as a purchase. I wanted to be on good terms with her.  
  
It was crowded at the bar. There was a song on that I recognized. It was one of the new ones Ahsoka had uploaded to my player pod while I was still in the bacta tank at the hospital. Padawan Commander Ahsoka Tano was a really good friend of mine. We had worked together pretty often and she was close to General Koon. She had also sent over some candy. My favorites were these chewy things in the shape of cartoon animals. I shared them with the other brothers in the hospital, even though our Kaminoan doctors got annoyed. Ahsoka had also asked the Jedi and some brothers to write notes for me to cheer me up and delivered them. Some were typical Jedi stuff, wise sayings or whatever. Some were bad jokes. Puns mostly. I hate puns. Her note made me laugh the hardest. “I think I know where I can get you a new eye really cheap. Master Obi-Wan is a heavy sleeper. I just have to find the right sized spoon. You don’t mind if it’s blue, do you?” You wouldn’t expect it from the look of her, but her sense of humor could be dark. Man, she was hilarious.  
  
I found C.C. over by the bar singing along and dancing a little. There were two brothers with her, kind of dancing with her. I say 'kind of' because we brothers just can’t dance. We are plain awful. I could never stand to see a brother dance. I was always as embarrassed for him as I would feel if I was doing it myself. We make stupid faces when we try, too. We have rhythm, but our moves make us look like we are having seizures. We all have this move where we raise an arm and point at the ceiling. And another where we raise both arms. Trust me, it is a tragedy. For some reason, this part of the Fett template is absolutely universal. The sensible ones among us don’t dance. The others, well…  
  
I rubbed my forehead in agitation. “You two are making my head hurt just looking at you. Please stop.” The two of them, enlisted men from Master Windu’s unit, the 2nd, stopped their writhings and scuttled away.  
  
“Well, well, well,” C.C. leaned back against the bar.  
  
I lowered my hand, “Hi, C.C.”  
  
She was startled, she even let out a kind of squeak of fear and covered her mouth with her hands. “Wolffe, what the hell happened?”  
  
“A little fight. I lost.”  
  
She had moved over to stand against me, she put her arms around my neck. “Oh, Wolffe, I’m so sorry.”  
  
“It’s nothing. Doesn’t even hurt anymore,” I hugged her back. We had never just embraced like that. Outside of her bedroom, we had barely touched at all. I whispered into her ear cone, “But I did get a pretty good prescription. Feel like doing a few lines?”  
  
She backed away and looked at me. “Sure,” she was smiling. I had had other girls besides her, both on Coruscant and on other worlds. All were pros. But she was the only one I did anything else with. Even if it was just substances.  
  
We went to a bathroom stall. I crushed a few of the pills on the back of the toilet. She put a line on the back of her hand and snorted. I did the same. We did the second round. Then she did hers and picked up mine. She put the line on her neck. I snorted it off and ended by kissing her chest. What followed was the best experience I have ever had in a bathroom.  
  
We finished and I asked her if she could maybe sell me another dose of spice.  
  
“Sure. I can have it brought to the bar in an hour.” She fastened her belt.  
  
“So, you doing anything for the next week or so?” I hoped she wasn’t mad any more. I wanted to see her after all. “I got this huge bonus for scar money. You could just start me a tab and tell me how much I owe you at the end of the week. Start it with this.”  
  
“Shut up.” She adjusted her cap in mild agitation, “You already know you don’t pay for me anymore.” I didn’t actually, but I guess I hadn’t paid the last time. We hadn’t even negotiated the price for the bathroom time. I realized I had misunderstood the situation. That’s why she had been mad at me. She had given herself to me and I kept trying to refuse the gift. I hadn’t ever thought that she might do things for reasons other than money. “I’d like it if you came and stayed with me. It would be good to have some security, it is a bad neighborhood. I need someone to throw guys out if I want them out. Besides,” she kissed my cheek, “we have fun together.”  
  
That week was a haze. I was high early and often. Still, it was a formative experience. C.C. had interesting friends. They came and went all hours of the day. These were her customers to whom she sold spice, the ryll variety. These beings were from all corners of the galaxy. Their experiences were so diverse. Most of the galaxy viewed them as scum because they had a so-called degenerate habit. But most of them had jobs, families, real lives. Each of them had more of a life than I had. From our shared ‘hobby’, we were drawn together. We all had a common understanding of something that people outside our community lacked. I felt as accepted there as I did with my brothers. More accepted than I did anywhere else on Coruscant.  
  
Between C.C. and me, things were surprisingly great. We would go out together. During the day, she wore these dark goggles. Same red lips. I wore my cloth uniform, or some of the clothes she bought me. She had a shirt made for me. It named my hometown, Tipoca City, the cloning facility where I was made. Under that it said, “The Killer Factory”. That was what Separatist propaganda called the place. I had always found that name kind of cool rather than insulting. Neither she, nor I, was allowed in most typical establishments. But she knew all the dive bars and seedy places that would serve us. The food was usually good but the drinks consisted of cheap, weak wines. We talked a lot. We laughed a lot. Neither one of us was ever very serious. Our inside jokes from our discussions became very elaborate. Our humor could be pretty dark. At night, we went to 79’s. She worked. I drank. She sat with me when she took breaks. I let her work, I didn’t bother her. She was busy. I went home with her. Sometimes she’d bring a guy with us for last call. Usually a friend of mine. They never stayed over. She slept with me. We had our fun, too. A lot. You wouldn’t have thought that she would want to since she had just been doing it all night. But I wasn’t complaining.  
  
By the end of the week, I was sent back to the front, but I didn’t feel like the same guy. I was a lot more sure of myself. I felt more confident. I might have seemed more impatient. Maybe it was my manner. Maybe it was the crazy eye. But people listened more. I was more serious. I got more respect. I stayed with C.C. for every leave after that and I didn’t care what other people thought.  
  
\--  
  
It was during a campaign on Felucia that we lost Ahsoka. I had been to Felucia before, but supervising the air assault, while Ahsoka got herself into some trouble. She was evacuated by Generals Skywalker and Plo Koon right before her position was overwhelmed. I worried a lot about Ahsoka. She was a close friend to me. We had always bonded over music and jokes. We shared a similar sense of humor. I know it sounds weird, we were really different. She was older in years and experience, fifteen where I was just eleven standard years. I only looked like a grown man. I was in some ways. In some ways not. She was a Jedi, so she had to be serious and mature beyond her years. But in private, like me, she loved being silly. We were just real with each other. I didn’t find her attractive or anything. Ahsoka was like a sister to me.  
  
Anyway, when we returned to Felucia, I was leading General Plo’s troops, General Skywalker was with Rex. Ahsoka wasn’t a general with her own legion. We each gave her guys from our outfits. I assigned Boost and Sinker, my batch mates and closest brothers, to watch her back. When Ahsoka went missing, I was livid. I didn’t hand out discipline as a commanding officer. My soldiers hadn’t technically done anything wrong according to protocol.  
  
Instead, I challenged them to fight me. Just fight. Not a friendly competition, like we did with boxing, or some of the other things we entertained ourselves with. Our Invented Rituals of Competition that we clones did in our personal time had rules. This was going to be a no holds barred fight. A personal fight. A matter of honor was at stake. My brothers had disgraced me. All we clones understood this method of settling a dispute. It had been taught to us on Kamino by the Mandalorian trainers who raised us. We saw the honor fights they had. This was not a military matter, it was a family matter.  
  
I called out Boost and Sinker right there in the camp on Felucia. All of the men went to see it. General Skywalker and Rex looked worried. They both knew how dangerous our training made us clones. But they didn’t try to stop it, they knew how sacred our code of honor was to us. Master Plo advised us to remember that we were family and that we shouldn’t be fighting each other. I told him that, all due respect, he should stay out of it. Ahsoka was family, too. And they’d let her down. Let me down. I’d take care of my own men. General Plo didn’t interfere. He respected clone culture too much for that.  
  
I stripped off the armor on my upper body and took off the shirt to my undersuit. They did the same. We all took off any weapons and belts. I then tensed and waited. As soon as they both looked up at me, I jumped on them like a wildcat and pushed both their heads to the dirt. I stood up quickly and began kicking them in the heads. They tried to cover their faces by keeping their arms up, so I stomped each of their stomachs. Boost tried to grab my leg to throw me off balance and I jumped up and landed on him with both feet. Knocked the wind right out of him. I stood up and loomed over both of them. “She is your sister! You protect her! No excuses!” I then stalked off past the gathered crowd. “Failures!” I shouted back over my shoulder. It was some intense theater. Just like our Mandalorian trainers back in the old ‘Killer Factory’. Dead silence from the crowd. Ne shab’rud’ni. Don’t mess with me. I knew what I wanted on my new shirt next time I was on Kamino.  
  
A fight might sound like a strange thing for me to do, I’m usually pretty laid back. But we clones were engineered to be aggressive. That was actually our natural impulse, but we kept it in check by force of will. I kind of joked around about the fight after, but at the time, I was deadly serious. Many of these guys had never seen me be so serious about something in my life.  
  
We searched but didn’t find Ahsoka. Boost and Sinker refused to go off duty, they never even slept while we scoured the planet and scanned for life forms. They worked with their bandaged heads and bruised ribs. They were really deferential to me, calling me Commander instead of by name. We didn’t joke around like we normally did. The fight was bygones, we had a duty to do.  
  
General Skywalker insisted that he could still sense Ahsoka through the Force, but somewhere far away. I think Rex was the only one of us brothers who believed him. Rex never questioned his general, ever. I think he really believed in the Force. Man that Skywalker guy could inspire faith. He always seemed to be able to do anything. Except he didn’t find Ahsoka.  
  
Some bounty hunters found Ahsoka, actually. And some Wookiees. It was the weirdest story. When she got back to Coruscant, I was there. I rushed to the Jedi Temple as soon as I heard. She was in her quarters. I was a little embarrassed to be in her private space. She had cleaned up and had washed her clothes. The Jedi rarely changed clothes, just washing the same things over and over. Something about being humble. If I had had the option, I would have worn different things every day depending on my mood or plans. Ahsoka took my player pod and added new songs, like she always did when we would see each other. We listened to some things, talked about music. She had been to the infirmary after what turned out to be a kidnapping ordeal. They had to check if she was healthy before she was cleared to return to duty. That included not just physical exams, but psychological and spiritual tests. She said she’d passed. The things that she was subjected to and survived would be recorded in her file as trials. When she had been through enough of these tests, her master would assess whether she was ready to pass the last trials, those before the Jedi Council, and become a knight. She seemed kind of quiet. She said she was tired, hadn’t been sleeping well. She had had some nightmares about some place called Mortis. A military doctor gave her a prescription for anxiety. She said she didn’t need the pills, so I asked her if I could have them. Good stuff.  
  
“Ahsoka, I really wanted to apologize. I should have given you better escort, my battalion should have been giving you more cover. Boost and Sinker, they’re good guys, but they really screwed up. They know it.”  
  
“I know, Anakin told me about your fight. Sounds like it was pretty intense. I’m sure he told it badly. He is really bad at telling a story.” She looked at me and smiled.  
  
“Only compared to you.” Ahsoka was famous for her storytelling. She’d do impressions and gestures. She was so fun to watch.  
  
“Are they okay?” she laughed.  
  
“Yeah, couple of hairline skull fractures. They got painkillers, so they’re pretty happy. I’m sure they’ll be over to visit once they can, they’re in charge of the 104th at the moment.”  
  
“What disciplinary action did Master Plo take when you did that?” He had to. He was my military commander. He didn’t usually discipline me, just like I didn’t usually discipline my guys really. But I deliberately did something against regs right in front of two squadrons and Jedi generals.  
  
I chuckled, “He said it would wait until later. Then when we got back to Coruscant, he gave me a few days off without pay. So I’m staying with a friend.”  
  
She smirked at me, “Is this the girl that Rex called your ‘floozy’?”  
  
“That’s just Rex being polite. She’s not a floozy, she’s a straight up prostitute.”  
  
Ahsoka gave me an incredulous look. “That doesn’t bother you?”  
  
“Why would it?” C.C. was as good a friend of mine as Ahsoka. We related to each other similarly. Just as people.  
  
“I don’t know. I mean, considering what she does for a living. Doesn’t it bother you that she’s been with all those guys?”  
  
“Nah, they’re my brothers. She’s really fun. We all like spending time with her.”  
  
“But don’t you want someone that only belongs to you?” she didn’t sound judgmental. She was genuinely curious, I mean, she belonged to an order of celibate monks, she admitted that she had no clue about relationships. Still, I knew two people belonging to each other was the more typical paradigm.  
  
“Why? I don’t own anything else, how could I own a person? It’s not like I pay for her. I don’t really have anything to offer her, but she lets me stay anyway.”  
  
“Wow, that sounds just like…have you ever heard this song,” she did a quick search and started to play it. We laughed at the lyrics. They were pretty funny. Self-deprecating. It became kind of a clone anthem among my brothers after that.  
  
\--  
  
My outfit had a lot of missions in the months that followed. Did some relief work on Aleen. Got the news about that hideous mess on Umbara. My brother Rex just wasn’t the same after Umbara. He kept asking for some leave time, he really needed it. Brother was stressed. No go. He was on duty for a year straight. He survived though. If it had been me, I might have purposefully gotten injured, just to get sent to the infirmary. Honestly, how many toes does a guy really need anyway?  
  
I was on leave and staying at C.C.’s before my mission to Kadavo. We brought my brother Cody home one night for last call. He had come back to Coruscant after General Kenobi went to Zygerria on a special mission. Cody’s orders, relayed to him by General Skywalker once he and Ahsoka escaped Zygerria, were to collect the 104th and bring us back to the Outer Rim for an extraction on Kadavo. The 212th was still on Kiros. Cody was pretty loaded. He only had the one night home. We were both supposed to report to Central Command in the morning to leave.  
  
Cody was stressed and talking about the nightmares. We all had them. Those ones where you have your body taken over and you kill a Jedi. They could be brutal. They often had images of dead clones. Really creepy. It was hard to get over the emotional stress they caused. We commiserated on the walk home as we passed a bottle between us.  
  
C.C. had a death stick. “Don’t you think it’s strange that you all have the same nightmare?”  
  
“Nah, we are all the same guy after all,” I joked. I took a drink and handed Cody the bottle. He was in armor. I was in my Killer Factory shirt and my snow-trooper jacket. It had been a cold day on Coruscant. “Don’t the sedatives help?” I asked Cody. The Kaminoans had been prescribing the sedatives to us when we complained about not being able to sleep, either from the lag from keeping different hours on planets or on ships, or from the nightmares, which were often reported symptoms in the Tipoca infirmary after the war started. I was pretty dependent on them.  
  
“I don’t take drugs.”  
  
“You drink enough,” C.C. didn’t like a holier than thou attitude.  
  
“Mind your own business!” Cody could be an angry drunk.  
  
We walked the rest of the way in silence. We went in and sat down for another drink in the living room. C.C. and I smoked some spice. We all three talked a bit. Cody was kind of dismissive of C.C. whenever she said something. He talked mostly to me. Finally, C.C. stood up, “I’m going to sleep. Goodnight,” she started to walk out.  
  
“Where are you going?” Cody asked.  
  
“I just said.”  
  
“I thought…” they had been together in the bathroom before. It was not like their relationship would have changed.  
  
“I don’t feel like it, not tonight. You boys can stay up if you want.”  
  
“Hey, I’ve got the money.”  
  
“Wolffe, get him out of here,” she walked into her bedroom.  
  
“Aright, Cody, let’s go out for a drink.” I patted his back. I’d get him on his way back to base, I figured. I was trying to handle it delicately. Some of the 79’s girls had been telling me that he could be borderline violent with them when he’d been drinking. I told them to tell me or one of my guys if we were around and we’d put him in the brig so he could sober up. After that, the 104th was the go to unit for all the girls’ security issues. They couldn’t pay us, but they did give us tips sometimes, or drinks, or the pleasure of their company. They could be really grateful. I was also the clone to go to for spice. C.C. was making a lot of money selling it to us. I didn’t take any of the cash most of the time, it was hers. I wouldn’t have had much to spend it on. I bought some clothes. Sometimes food. Army food was terrible. But I usually could only wear different clothes or get different food on leave. So even that was restricted. Occasionally, I used to buy gifts for my friends. I gave Master Plo a really good bottle of Mandalorian whiskey. To drink through his mask, he used a special straw, it was funny. When we drank some of it together, I used a straw, too. He laughed so hard. Man, we got hammered.  
  
Cody and I went to a bar across the street. This place knew me. They risked being fined, most places had to pay a fine to serve military. This place let me in, I would pay the fine for them if they got caught. I ordered a drink, but I told the bartender to get Cody a caf. He said he was fine and asked for a drink. So they brought him one. He had on that old face we all used to use in Tipoca City to express that we were dangerous and to tell a brother to back off. I raised my glass and toasted with him, “K’oyacyi.” He loved all that Mandalorian stuff.  
  
“K’oyacyi.” He said. “Wolffe,” he began, slurring his speech a little, “Can I ask you? What…..do you see in her? I mean whatever, women are fun for a few minutes tops. But that’s all you need them for. How do you stand her?”  
  
“Oh come on, we both have females we respect.”  
  
“Yeah, I know, but they are Jedi. C.C. is a whore.”  
  
“So?”  
  
“So she’s a whore. She makes her living by degrading herself.”  
  
“Are we any different?”  
  
“You’re kidding, right?”  
  
“No, think about it, we were made, nobody asked us if we wanted to be there. They kept us in Tipoca, they experimented on us, they hurt us, then they told us it was our duty to die for the Republic, something that we had never seen. All I heard was that pledging myself, essentially selling myself, to the Republic was the only way I was going to get off Kamino.” I was kind of laughing nervously. I knew he didn’t share my views about any of it.  
  
“So that’s how you see our home?”  
  
“What is a home anyway? Just a place. And ours was an awful place. I wanted to get away from there. I didn’t know if it would be better out here, but I knew I didn’t want to go back to where I came from. I had to take a chance at something better, I was desperate. So I agreed to give myself to them, on the promise that they might compensate me with something someday. I don’t know yet how I’m ever going to be compensated for serving.”  
  
“We owe them, they created us.”  
  
“They don’t even seem to have a plan for us besides sending us into battle.”  
  
“Usenye! Your brain is a strange place. Sometimes your thoughts border on treason. Good thing nobody can ever tell if you’re joking or not. You’d get arrested for the way you talk, ner vod.” Cody was always gratuitously speaking Mando’a. He was so pretentious. He really pictured himself as one of our Mandalorian trainers. Man, he had idolized them. He was swaying on the stool a little. I thought I’d better put him in an air taxi. “So what do you even care about?” he asked me finally.  
  
“I don’t know, at least now I get to travel. I like that. And at least I matter to some people. I matter to General Plo Koon, I matter to the brothers I lead, I matter to people like Ahsoka. And to C.C., I matter too. She’s actually glad to see me whenever I come back. She would miss me if I were gone.”  
  
“What do you mean, you matter to her? There are millions of you and she could have any one of them. You make it sound like you think she actually cares about you as a person. You deluded bastard. She has you enslaved.”  
  
I shrugged. “What does our status matter? What we have works for us.”  
  
“I just don’t understand you brother. Don’t the Military Police investigate you for living with her?”  
  
“Why would they? Nobody cares what I do on leave. As long as I still show up to work.”  
  
“Rex was living with a girl for a little while a few months ago. He got investigated.”  
  
“I heard that rumor. I dunno, I’ve never seen that brother hit on a girl ever.  
  
“No, I know they investigated. Someone reported him.”  
  
“Who would do that? Couldn’t have been a brother.” We never ratted on each other. We had a code of honor.  
  
Cody didn’t answer me.  
  
\--  
  
I came home to C.C. pretty often. We had our routine. Together we were solid. We had no stresses. We passed our time just enjoying our lives. It was when I’d go back to the front that I was unhappy. That was most of my time, unfortunately. I was using a lot of substances. Sedatives to help me sleep. Spice on my leaves. A synth drug to help keep me off the spice. Painkillers whenever I was injured. Then anti-anxiety meds when I started having the flashbacks. Especially of that Force torture I’d suffered when I lost my eye. The nightmares got worse. C.C. knew about them. She’d slept beside me enough. She would actually hold me and calm me. She didn’t ask me about it the next day, which would have been embarrassing. She didn’t actually say anything. It was kind of a relief. I was glad she was there.  
  
I was on a leave when Rex stopped over at C.C.’s on my last day of leave before I had to report back to Central Command. I didn’t even know he was back from Cato Nemoidia. I was glad to see him. He looked like he’d been hit by a metro train. He said he was just tired. He asked me if I’d go out for a drink with him. I said I was headed over to 79’s anyway. He was still wearing a chain around his neck. It was just a thin one he had had made out of metal from a shock collar he was forced to wear when he was kept as a slave for a time on Kadavo. The metal had a kind of blue tint. It was neat. He said he had started to wear it to remind him of why his duty mattered. I was involved in that mission. We’d freed people who had been forced into slavery. It was a really unambiguous example of us fighting for right. We felt like we had fewer and fewer things we did that we could look at and not see a gray area.  
  
We went out that night and I swear I have never seen that brother drink so much or so fast. He was trying to hurt himself, I was sure of it. I helped him home to the base that night, but I had to make sure he had a bucket by his head. I got him up the next day, but he was pretty destroyed. It was funny to see, since his guys gave him such a hard time about it. I had eaten some bantha sausage and made my way through morning drills. I napped the afternoon and was ready for guard duty that night.  
  
\--  
  
I was still on Coruscant when Ahsoka was arrested for terrorism and murder. I was called to the Jedi Temple. The Jedi Council assigned Generals Skywalker and Plo Koon to find her. I wasn’t off duty, so I stayed at the base when we weren’t specifically out looking. Some of my guys had seen C.C. at 79’s and told her what was going on. She was concerned for me. I had told C.C. and Ahsoka about each other, even though they’d never met. They made each other laugh second hand a lot.  
  
When we caught up to her, Ahsoka was with none other than Asajj Ventress, the assassin who took my eye. I know why I didn’t believe Ahsoka when she said she was innocent. It looked pretty bad. General Skywalker did believe her, so Rex did. That undying faith again. Anyway, Ventress got away, but we found Ahsoka again pretty quickly. She was in a warehouse. We approached her quietly once she was sighted. She turned to see me. “No,” she shouted when she saw me. I raised my pistol. “Wolffe, let me explain.” I shot her. It was on stun, but I don’t even know if I knew that. The anti-anxiety pills I was on had me kind of on auto-pilot.  
  
I walked over to one of the crates, holstered my blaster and took out a canister and read from its side, “Explosives. These were the same types of nano droids that were used to blow up the Jedi Temple.”  
  
General Skywalker looked devastated. “I can’t believe it,” was all he said.  
  
I felt pretty low, but I could believe it. Rex and I held Ahsoka's shoulders on the transport back to the Jedi Temple, looking at each other pretty uncomfortably. Then we went home to the base.  
  
“Wolffe, why did you do that!”  
  
“Do what?”  
  
“Shoot her!”  
  
“Uh, that was the mission. She bombed the Jedi Temple. Some of our brothers were killed in that attack. An innocent woman was Force choked to death. It was our job to get her! I did what I had to.”  
  
“But she is like our sister!” What was he endorsing, I wondered. Would he have let her escape?  
  
Suddenly I wanted to punch him very badly. It would have been pretty satisfying. He was being judgmental. As if I didn't hate myself enough for not believing her. I would have liked myself better if I did. But I just couldn't. And I hated him for deluding himself, always trying to see the good in people. Real world experience had taught me that people are capable of anything.  
  
I put in for more leave and got it. General Plo had to preside over Ahsoka’s trial with the rest of the Jedi Council. I went home to C.C.’s. The trial was closed, so it wasn’t until it was over that we found out Ahsoka had been expelled from the Jedi Order and sent for a military trial. That one was public. C.C. and I watched reports on the holo-net. I felt so low that I just stayed home some nights.  
  
Ahsoka was found not guilty. Someone else confessed. I don’t think I had ever felt like such scum in my life. I had been too cynical to believe in her innocence. What was wrong with me? She was my friend and I didn’t trust her. In my defense, the frame-up had been really convincing. But for a clone, loyalty is of the utmost importance. I was stuck between two sacred things for clones, my duty to the Republic and my family. Rex judged me for making the wrong choice.  
  
I left C.C.’s place for a few days. I tried to go and find Ahsoka at the temple to say goodbye, but she had already left. General Plo Koon was there, he invited me to go with him to visit General Kenobi. I sat around with them while they vented their frustrations about the rest of the members of the Jedi Council. It surprised me, the amount of politics that there was. I had always thought that the Jedi peacefully agreed about everything. That was the image they presented to the public. But those two were really offended about the way Ahsoka was treated. It really impressed me how much they cared. They had never doubted her innocence, the same as Rex and General Skywalker. But unlike those guys, they had never spoken up outside of private council meetings. Publicly, and effectively, they abandoned her and then had remorse about it. Personally, I admired Rex and Skywalker more because they risked being reviled, their position was unpopular. They stood up for what they knew was right and fought if necessary. If their faith hadn’t been rewarded, they would have been totally humiliated. But even though they'd been more cautious, Generals Koon and Kenobi had at least had personal faith in Ahsoka. I hadn’t even had that. I really hated myself. I hated almost everything about my life. I went home to my girl.  
  
\--  
  
I didn’t actually know how I was ever going to face Rex again. But he didn’t even say ‘I told you so’. He was too broken to want to. When I found him at 79’s a few weeks later, he was drinking alone. I tried a joke. He told me Fives died. That kind of killed the night.  
  
At least he didn’t mention Ahsoka. Rex, Mr. Perfect Clone, was more okay with that than I was. He didn’t have the regrets I did. The son of a bitch made me feel bad about myself, and it wasn’t even because of anything he said or did. He made me feel bad by just how forgiving he was.  
  
Fives was shot by his own brothers after he seemingly came unhinged from a parasite infection. At least, that was what they attributed it to. He had been ranting about a conspiracy and control chips in our heads. We never had a brother have a breakdown like that before. We were conditioned from early childhood to withstand the stress of battle. The concept that we could come unglued was a frightening one. I was worried that I could lose it someday. The things that were going on at the time were actually pretty scary. Anything seemed possible. Hence, my anti-anxiety prescription.  
  
C.C. laughed at me. Where I despaired, she still had faith in the future. Her cynicism with sentient beings meant that nothing they did surprised her. So nothing that was happening was any more appalling than the stuff we had always done. Life would continue, people had a future, one as miserable as it had always been for us. I loved that she had such a coherent personal philosophy. I found her genuinely fascinating.  
  
We were sitting, discussing it while having waffles at a diner after 79’s closed. Rex had had a lot to drink. He was passed out in the booth next to me, snoring a little. We were planning on putting him on our couch so he wouldn’t get put in the brig. I was just telling C.C. that I was afraid I’d lose my mind.  
  
“If you’re worried that you’re insane, you’re probably not,” she told me. ‘Sane’ for clones was defined as ‘fit for duty’. The Kaminoan doctors called us all fit for duty, as long as there was nothing wrong with us physically. They had to define it that way because we couldn’t really be judged for sanity compared to normal sentients. We had too many things that we had to do that would be considered crazy if you did them outside the line of duty. Our jobs were to go kill and risk our lives. That went against even the most basic human instincts. How sound could our psychological states have been even under the best of circumstances? So ‘sane’ was just ‘fit for duty’. I guess, C.C. had a point, though. It was sane to question yourself. Someone 'unfit for duty', so to speak, would not realize there was anything wrong with them. I was fine. Just neurotic. Ah, the good old days in the Grand Army of the Republic.  
  
\--  
  
The next time I saw Rex, he’d lost his neck chain. Said he’d traded it. Brothers did that often, traded affects when we had gone through an important mission or experience together. Had a fresh cut on his head. He said that he had figured out what Fives knew, why he was killed. He said the control chips were real. He suspected that they were connected to the nightmares about killing the Jedi. He thought for sure that the war was going to turn into the Jedi versus the clones. I let him remove my chip. I wasn’t about to tell him I didn’t believe him after he’d been right about Ahsoka. It was not like I risked anything. I didn’t care much if I died. And turning on General Plo Koon was the last thing I wanted to do. Every time I’d seen it in my nightmares, it made me sick. Sometimes I’d had dreams about killing Ahsoka, too. I hadn’t had any nightmares since the inoculation against the parasite Fives had, but I was sure that I never wanted them to come back.  
  
After Rex removed my chip, he went back to the base. He said he was trying to do everything by the book so that he wouldn’t attract any suspicion. He thought he was being watched. I told him he was crazy.  
  
“Hey, hey, don’t say that. We prefer ‘unfit for duty’,” he joked as he waved goodnight. He really had become a funny guy, despite his rough life.  
  
I went home. C.C. was waiting up, smoking a hookah of spice. I had left her at the bar, I guess she had walked home alone. I didn’t ask if anyone had been over for last call. Didn’t look like it, but it wasn’t like I minded. “What did Rex want?” she wasn’t mad. It wasn’t like she kept tabs on me.  
  
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” I couldn’t tell her. It might have put her in danger.  
  
“What happened to your head?”  
  
I had a cut from the surgery. “Oh, I got hit with some broken glass. Rex and I were whipping bottles against a wall. Some ricocheted.” I really surprised myself with how fast I came up with it.  
  
“Idiots.” She offered me the pipe. She didn’t call me on it, but she knew I was lying. She’d seen Rex with the same cut. Still, it wasn’t like she owned me. I sat down on the couch and she curled up next to me. It worked for us.  
  
\--  
  
Rex supposedly died. He had told me his plan, so I wasn’t surprised. He sent a coded message telling me he was staying with a brother on Saleucami. He had told me and C.C. the story about this guy when he had camped on our couch that night. We had woken up the next day and he made us lunch. Rex could actually cook. We just sat around in the kitchen watching him work. He lavished us with jovial abuse, since we didn’t even try to help.  
  
“Most of us ladies like to be pampered,” C.C. threw back.  
  
“I’ll let you know if I see a lady anywhere around here, Ma’am. You two should be used to rough conditions from your military lives,” he saluted her. He always saluted her. He said that in his book, experience was everything, and she out-ranked him by a lot in that department. He said he considered her an army commander at least. She really liked him, even though he was one of the only guys I knew that she had never been with. He didn’t go to professional girls, said he didn’t like to be touched by someone who didn’t really want him.  
  
He brought us our lunch and sat down with us. “This reminds me of this time on Saleucami. Did I ever tell you about that time I got shot?” He had taken off his armor and laid it by the door. He was just wearing his undersuit. I don’t think he had any other clothes.  
  
“Why does this remind you of getting shot?” C.C. put out the death stick.  
  
“No, I mean, after that. I ran into this brother, he had deserted. He was living with a Twi’lek. He was raising her kids with her. They called each other married. I don’t know if they had really gotten married or just lived like they were, like you two.” He coated some fried roots with hot sauce.  
  
C.C. laughed. “A Twi’lek. Maybe you clones have a type,” she took a bite.  
  
“Nah, I like humans. Fives liked Togrutas. Jesse’s girlfriend is a Pantoran,” Rex listed.  
  
“Bly had that affair with that Muun guy. Oddball tried out the Ithorian professional girl. I think Treach did it with a Quarren. What do you think it is like to kiss all those tentacles?”  
  
“She probably didn’t use them on his face,” C.C. said, looking wicked.  
  
“Ahem.” Rex was really polite. He found us appalling. “Of course, it’s more about the individual girl than the species, but we all have different things we find attractive. It probably depends on our own individual experiences.”  
  
C.C. and I were both surprised, I think, that he ever gave things like that much thought. He was so quiet a lot of the time that it was difficult to know what he thought, but once you got him started talking, he was a really smart guy. Like me, he thought a lot about why we clones were the way they were.  
  
“Although, I have been wondering, C.C.,” he was sounding like he used to in our discussions in the Leadership Academy. He adopted the same manner. “Do you actually find clones attractive, I mean, your choosing to work with us, is there something about us you like?” Rex absolutely thought the world of our clone template father, Jango. He found the guy so impressive. Jango had been around Tipoca when we were growing up and we could see him using training facilities. As a warrior, he was a total badass. We all walked a little taller when we knew that we were in some way just like him. Rex said he also admired him as a father. I couldn’t see it, Boba was a little brat. I thought Jango did a terrible job as a parent. Anyway, Rex was obsessed with making the case that we clones were wonderful. Hence, he was fishing for compliments.  
  
“I don’t know. I like to make lots of money. There are tons of you guys and you all want one thing. I am a rich woman from working with you. Because of what I do and what I was, I’m not welcome in normal society. Neither are you guys. I guess I am drawn to you guys in some ways. I understand you. You’re also a lot of fun. And cute. Some of you are handsomer than others, of course,” she said as she touched my face, “Right, Old One Eye?”  
  
Rex actually looked at me like he was jealous.  
  
\--  
  
I had to know if Rex was really on Saleucami. I looked up registered Twi’leks on the planet. There wasn’t much. But there was a Twi’lek colony in a pretty remote area. I tried to call one from home one morning a while after Rex supposedly died. “Ne…stragos foure?” My Twi’leki was really poor. I was trying to ask if anyone had seen a soldier. I got hung up on. C.C. came out and found me swearing at the com. I was suddenly sure I was pronouncing wrong and probably asking the woman at the other end about the status of her dried vegetables.  
  
“What are you doing?”  
  
“I think Rex might have gone into hiding. I thought he might have gone to Saleucami, so I just wanted to try to call this Twi’lek colony.”  
  
“Well, they won’t talk to you if you just call up out of nowhere. We Twi’leks are pretty secretive in general. You can’t just say what you’re looking for, like you did. ‘Is a soldier there?’ Honestly. They don’t want the authorities after them. They won’t tell you anything.”  
  
“Can you help me?” I asked her.  
  
“If he ran, why do you want to know where he went? You might get in trouble too if the army finds out.” She was actually concerned about me.  
  
“I just need to know so I can warn him if anyone is coming for him.” And to find him in case I had to run too. Things were happening in the army that scared me. Brothers were getting arrested a lot more often. And court martialed. And executed. Chancellor Palpatine and that bitch of his, Tarkin, had removed more and more military discipline from the hands of the clone commanders and given it to natural born military personnel. The Jedi hadn’t done anything, although, General Plo Koon had advised me to be careful. I honestly told him I would. If they came after me for the drugs I wanted a clear plan. Hence the calls that morning.  
  
C.C. grabbed the com and called the next number. “Ne nerra-chi foure?” ‘Is my brother there?’ The first few said no. She apologized for the misdial. Then she’d talk briefly with the person at the other end. She was so friendly, she could talk to anyone.  
  
On about the fourth one, a woman paused before answering. “Nerra? Soui. Ou ne mant.” ‘Brother? Yes. Not at the moment.’ I could understand Twi’leki a lot better than I could speak it.  
  
“Zen ero uruk?” ‘When will he be back”  
  
“Eh…mi ash.” She didn’t know.  
  
C.C. talked to her just a little. The place we’d called belonged to someone named Suu Lawquane.  
  
That night was my last night of leave. I had to get back to the front. Cato Nemoidia. We were trying to take the planet finally. Fighting there had been pretty fierce, the Trade Federation was collapsing. We could feel that the war was coming to an end. Since the Chancellor had been given control of the galactic banks, the Separatists couldn’t get any money. No money, no new droids.  
  
C.C. and I were smoking a ton of spice. It would be my last chance before who knew when. So I just kept filling the pipe. It was not great quality stuff. The insurgents who were in charge on Ryloth had tried to put regulations on its processing, so unlicensed supplies were harder to come by.  
  
C.C. had been quieter than usual. I guess because I had been. We hadn’t been joking around. Experience had taught me that she knew something was up. She had her head on my chest on the couch and we were both staring at the ceiling. She asked suddenly, “Wolffe, do you think you’ll survive the war?” She had obviously thought about her future, what options she would have. It was a liberty she had as a free being. I wasn’t free to choose.  
  
“I want to. Most of the time I doubt it,” I answered honestly.  
  
“I think I’m really going to miss you.” Her voice cracked. I’d never heard it do that.  
  
“At least someone will.” I squeezed her shoulder and kissed her head.  
  
“Is there any way you might live?” she sniffed a little. I realized that somehow she knew I was running. I had already decided to. I had to take a chance. I was desperate.  
  
“What kind of a life is this anyway?” I dismissed it. More self-deprecation. We clones really didn’t think much of ourselves. Especially that late in the war. We knew nothing good awaited us.  
  
“Please promise me you’ll take care of yourself, no matter what.” She nestled deeper into my chest.  
  
“I will.” This time she knew was goodbye. That night was the most spectacular I’d ever had with her. It wasn’t fun, I mean, it was good, but we were more serious than we’d probably ever been in our lives.  
  
I left in the morning before she got up and left her a note on her dresser. Just some silly things. I said I would miss her. And that she should take care of my brothers. That I knew they would look out for her. That I had always thought she was beautiful. And smart. And funny. I meant it, although no one could ever tell if I was joking or not, so she probably laughed. I never saw her again. I never contacted her. I deserted the army in that disaster that followed and left her behind. Rex was right, the war did turn into Jedi versus clones. But not for very long. As far as I know, C.C. never tried to find me. Her life went on, I'm sure. I didn’t have to tell her to take care of herself, I knew she could do that. I still think about her every damn day. She was not the only person in the galaxy that I ever cared about, but she was the only one who always made me really happy. That's what women can be under good circumstances. I wish a lot these days that things had turned out differently. I have some regrets, but being with her was the easiest part of my life. I was sure of it. If you’re worried that you’re in love, you’re probably not.

  


**Author's Note:**

> Part 1- Welcome to My Disaster


End file.
